While I'm away can I recommend you try the properly researched and well written blogs on the left. It'll be a refreshing change from the barely thought-out stuff I usually offer.
Tweet
Saturday, 24 September 2011
Holiday
Off on holiday for a couple of weeks. I'm pretty sure you'll cope admirably without my inane rants for a fortnight.
While I'm away can I recommend you try the properly researched and well written blogs on the left. It'll be a refreshing change from the barely thought-out stuff I usually offer.
Tweet
While I'm away can I recommend you try the properly researched and well written blogs on the left. It'll be a refreshing change from the barely thought-out stuff I usually offer.
Tweet
Monday, 19 September 2011
J'accuse Peter
In his Sunday Mail column this week 50's Teddy-boy fan Peter Hitchens dares people to accuse him of 'moral panic'. Why - in this specific case - would you want to accuse the perennially grumpy old sod of moral panic you may ask? Well Peter does his best to regale us of a horrible case of persecution, bullying and intimidation that were heaped upon the undeserving Fiona Pilkington and her daughter.
These horrendous events are a clear demonstration that the world has slid into a mire of lefty lawlessness with benefit baddies running amok. His main stab at a point revolves around the fact that these heinous type of events did not occur when there was fear of the law. He seems to think that the past was a country bereft of evil, although if you do a quick search you'll find plenty of cases of people coming forward with their horror stories of abuse and harm inflicted on the vulnerable by people in positions of power; nuns & priests for instance.
Perhaps Peter pines for an age where there seems to be much less vicious crime purely because it's reported less. Hear no evil, speak no evil so there can't be any evil?
That's not Peter's view of course he believes that it's a fear or reluctance of intervention by authorities that allows offenders to get away with their actions. As he paraphrases them "We can do anything we want..." Why can they do anything they want? Surely because no one is stopping them.
A little further down his rant - past a piece whimsically praising stay at home mothers and pinafores - he tells a tale of a stroll through modern Britain, presumably taken by himself. In this stroll he comes across a "Menacing young man" who looks like he's going to attack a group of young women with pushchairs. Does Peter - a man in a position of authority, a respectable pillar of the community, a guiding light and example to millions of readers - intervene and try to protect these young women vulnerable to attack. Well you'd imagine he would, he spent a few hundred words not far up the page criticising a lack of intervention, but of course he doesn't. Apparently there's no sign of authority and he's not interested in helping. He's not interested in making the country better, he's not interested in looking out for the weak, he's not interested in challenging offenders.
He is interested in spying on a scene of potential violent crime, writing about this as an increasing amount of evidence of 'moral panic' in modern Britain and pocketing a big fat cheque for the privilege though.
These horrendous events are a clear demonstration that the world has slid into a mire of lefty lawlessness with benefit baddies running amok. His main stab at a point revolves around the fact that these heinous type of events did not occur when there was fear of the law. He seems to think that the past was a country bereft of evil, although if you do a quick search you'll find plenty of cases of people coming forward with their horror stories of abuse and harm inflicted on the vulnerable by people in positions of power; nuns & priests for instance.
Perhaps Peter pines for an age where there seems to be much less vicious crime purely because it's reported less. Hear no evil, speak no evil so there can't be any evil?
That's not Peter's view of course he believes that it's a fear or reluctance of intervention by authorities that allows offenders to get away with their actions. As he paraphrases them "We can do anything we want..." Why can they do anything they want? Surely because no one is stopping them.
A little further down his rant - past a piece whimsically praising stay at home mothers and pinafores - he tells a tale of a stroll through modern Britain, presumably taken by himself. In this stroll he comes across a "Menacing young man" who looks like he's going to attack a group of young women with pushchairs. Does Peter - a man in a position of authority, a respectable pillar of the community, a guiding light and example to millions of readers - intervene and try to protect these young women vulnerable to attack. Well you'd imagine he would, he spent a few hundred words not far up the page criticising a lack of intervention, but of course he doesn't. Apparently there's no sign of authority and he's not interested in helping. He's not interested in making the country better, he's not interested in looking out for the weak, he's not interested in challenging offenders.
He is interested in spying on a scene of potential violent crime, writing about this as an increasing amount of evidence of 'moral panic' in modern Britain and pocketing a big fat cheque for the privilege though.
Tweet
Friday, 16 September 2011
A beautiful mind (set)
Over at Angrymob Uponnothing welcomed the unveiling of the Mail's collection of Bloggers grouped together under the heading "Rightminds" - I did wonder what you called a group of reactionary drama queens and now we know. I thought a 'Horror' or maybe a 'Lynching' were more likely candidates, apparently not.
They have brought together some of the oddest minds in journalism to eek out bilge, fear, uncertainty and doubt into an undeserving world, but - believe it or not - this isn't the A-team they're fielding.
I've been lucky enough to get hold of a early draft of Simon Heffer's wanted list that he dropped onto Paul Dacre's desk. Unfortunately in these days of extravagant transfer fees and ill-timed deaths he couldn't quite pull together the Championship winning team that could compete with Fox news - but his fantasy team is below, imagine what we could have won.
They have brought together some of the oddest minds in journalism to eek out bilge, fear, uncertainty and doubt into an undeserving world, but - believe it or not - this isn't the A-team they're fielding.
I've been lucky enough to get hold of a early draft of Simon Heffer's wanted list that he dropped onto Paul Dacre's desk. Unfortunately in these days of extravagant transfer fees and ill-timed deaths he couldn't quite pull together the Championship winning team that could compete with Fox news - but his fantasy team is below, imagine what we could have won.
Tweet
Wednesday, 7 September 2011
Is it raining?
Tax is a kick in the teeth, most people think this. You work your fingers to the bone, sat on your fat arse in an office, then pay day comes around and some of your hard-earned is creamed off to spend on killing God-bothering-nut jobs in Afghanistan. Of course most of the tax actually gets spent keeping the street lights on or having an ambulance on stand-by for when I decide Ice Hockey is actually the sport for me. So based on this you suck it in, write off your losses and get on with your life.
Unless you can afford a PR company. In which case you get them to round up a few tame academics - who will do anything for a sniff of cash and almost anything for an undergraduate with a nice smile and a lack of morals - and get them to tell the world that the 50p tax rate is making the country unbearable to live in and repelling free floating wads of cash from landing here. Making the rich pay this high rate of taxation on their well deserved pay-packets is driving them out of the country and raising a barrier to stinking rich foreigners coming over and building business empires here.
To be honest who cares if they leave and who cares if they don't come, neither will really happen. The real driving force of the economy in this country is the small & medium sized businesses and it's rare their owners and employees would come close to earning the £150,000 pa required to be taxed so heavily. The people who take home this sort of size pay packet tend to be working in the Service / Finance sector and so don't add much to the real economy - but keep the coke dealers in The City busy (I'm looking at you Chancellor...)
The few people actually paying the estimated £2.7bn this tax raises feel hard done by and so, after getting very angry and beating their Au Pairs with an ivory golf club, came up with the brilliant idea to tell us peasants that if they continue to have to suffer this inhuman taxation regime it'll actually be worse for us in the long run. The economy will continue to fall because of it and the only jobs available will be part-time trainee floor moppers at Kansas Fried Chicken.
This is known as pissing down your back and telling you it's raining.
As a youth I used to work behind the bar in a working men's club - the working part is ironic I think - during the tombola (Not bingo, tombola) I used to contemplate how many pints of lager I'd earned so far that night. It worked out about a pint an hour so I used to count down the minutes till another Carling Black Label had been earned. This impressed on me the importance of how much per hour you're paid and therefore I wondered how much these hard done by folk take home per hour after the tax man's had his cut, for all the fuss they've kicked up it must be a significant drop, a real belly blow to the take home, when they hit the magic number. So I did a smashing graph showing how much people take home per hour after tax & NI compared to their gross annual income. What I was expecting was a huge kink in the curve at £150,000 justifying their cry baby antics. What I got was a straight line and proof that they're just greedy bastards.
Tweet
 |
| Canadian Can-Can |
Unless you can afford a PR company. In which case you get them to round up a few tame academics - who will do anything for a sniff of cash and almost anything for an undergraduate with a nice smile and a lack of morals - and get them to tell the world that the 50p tax rate is making the country unbearable to live in and repelling free floating wads of cash from landing here. Making the rich pay this high rate of taxation on their well deserved pay-packets is driving them out of the country and raising a barrier to stinking rich foreigners coming over and building business empires here.
To be honest who cares if they leave and who cares if they don't come, neither will really happen. The real driving force of the economy in this country is the small & medium sized businesses and it's rare their owners and employees would come close to earning the £150,000 pa required to be taxed so heavily. The people who take home this sort of size pay packet tend to be working in the Service / Finance sector and so don't add much to the real economy - but keep the coke dealers in The City busy (I'm looking at you Chancellor...)
 |
| Hookers & Coke - not an upper class department store |
This is known as pissing down your back and telling you it's raining.
As a youth I used to work behind the bar in a working men's club - the working part is ironic I think - during the tombola (Not bingo, tombola) I used to contemplate how many pints of lager I'd earned so far that night. It worked out about a pint an hour so I used to count down the minutes till another Carling Black Label had been earned. This impressed on me the importance of how much per hour you're paid and therefore I wondered how much these hard done by folk take home per hour after the tax man's had his cut, for all the fuss they've kicked up it must be a significant drop, a real belly blow to the take home, when they hit the magic number. So I did a smashing graph showing how much people take home per hour after tax & NI compared to their gross annual income. What I was expecting was a huge kink in the curve at £150,000 justifying their cry baby antics. What I got was a straight line and proof that they're just greedy bastards.
Tweet
Wednesday, 31 August 2011
He's banking on it
Uncle Vince has started the day off telling the world and their wife that when the Independent Commission on Banking (ICB) makes its recommendation on ways to stop Mr Barclays taking the country to the cleaners again the government should jump on it like a footballer on a Page 3 model.
That's fine for a Lib Dem to say that, they need to keep vegans onside not bankers, but it seems he's wound up the money lenders anyway and they've released the big dogs.
The head of the CBI - John Cridland says it's madness to ask the banks to change their ways. After all they've learnt their lessons and promise to not do it again, fair enough should we leave them on the naughty step? The British Bankers association said it would be better for all (their members) if the reforms were put off - at least until everybody had forgotten about them. It also seems David Cameron has been given a prod in the right direction as it seems any suggestions will be implemented after he's had the funding to fight the next election.
Of course big DC - when he's worrying about putting jobs at risk - is thinking about his own and not about your shelf-stacking get-rich-quick-scheme.
The Telegraph, home of tax dodging slave owning bankers since 1979 - has pre-empted the ICB's report by publishing it's own top ten banking bugbears. The ten things that anger the Telegraph and its readers about banks, bankers and other financial shenanigans are shown in the screenshot here...
Yep nothing to see here. The bankers are all right, now give them your money.
Tweet
That's fine for a Lib Dem to say that, they need to keep vegans onside not bankers, but it seems he's wound up the money lenders anyway and they've released the big dogs.
 |
| John pleasures a tiny invisible man |
Of course big DC - when he's worrying about putting jobs at risk - is thinking about his own and not about your shelf-stacking get-rich-quick-scheme.
The Telegraph, home of tax dodging slave owning bankers since 1979 - has pre-empted the ICB's report by publishing it's own top ten banking bugbears. The ten things that anger the Telegraph and its readers about banks, bankers and other financial shenanigans are shown in the screenshot here...
Yep nothing to see here. The bankers are all right, now give them your money.
Tweet
Friday, 26 August 2011
Overrun by immigrants
Net immigration is up 20% and while, in truth, this is due to a big reduction in people leaving the UK it's not stopped the Mail dredging up some intense fear-mongering stories about hordes of aliens arriving uninvited.
An interesting question raised here, why does it always happen in Siberia? Whenever anyone ever mentions little green men or probing cows' bums or flying saucers it's always in that God-forbidden wasteland of the east.
Tweet
An interesting question raised here, why does it always happen in Siberia? Whenever anyone ever mentions little green men or probing cows' bums or flying saucers it's always in that God-forbidden wasteland of the east.
Tweet
Monday, 22 August 2011
With age comes wisdom, and the faint smell of cabbage.
The young have been in the limelight over the past few weeks following the violent riots and the record exam results - on an aside it's funny to think that there were probably no more than 20,000 kids who were involved in the riots and there were around 200,000 kids doing A levels and we're going to change the way the country's managed to suit the criminal minority?
Everybody - including me - has had their say on today's youth; David Cameron thinks they're at the heart of Britain's broken and / or sick society, Nick Clegg reckons orange jumpsuits should be their apparel of non-choice, Ed Milliband reckons we're all as bad as each other from MPs down to burglars, crazy racist historian David Starkey reckons its acting like you've got darker skin than you really have that caused the mayhem and it goes on.
Right wing crazies in the Mail & Telegraph reckon the riots prove them correct; the world's gone to hell and we're only minutes away from a Pol Pot type revolution where anyone who's ever listened to Radio 3 will be slaughtered in their beds. Left wing luvvies in the Guardian & Mirror think the A-level results show the kids are alright it's the bastard bankers stealing our money and shipping it all out to Bermuda that'll leave us freezing to death in December when we can't afford 50p for the gas meter. You pay your money and take your choice, until now.
Finally from the swirling maelstrom of opinion comes a guiding light. A beacon that we can all cling to and learn from the wisdom that spouts forth from this fountain of knowledge. Step forward sage of our time... Joan Collins.
Yes Joan Collins that's right. World famous actress, star of Martini adverts (or was it Cinzano - and more importantly is there a difference?) and former UKIP pin-up has spilled her wisdom out onto the pages of the Daily Mail, and as you've probably already guessed, it turns out to be the unstable rantings of a pre-senile rich old woman who thinks today's children are all evil devils. Even her own grand kids.
Realising that she's witnessed so much wrong, and the world should be told, she's had a little Indian slave girl she keeps in a cupboard write down her observations in blood (Probably) and then has paid a tame publisher to print them in a book for her. This is being serialised in the Daily Mail for people who like Grumpy Old Men on the BBC but think it's observations are too clever, funny or communist.
There's much that peeves her, too much to wade through - she's worse than Grandpa Simpson but one thing she's not too happy about is the culture of instant gratification that's prevalent in today's celebrity world.
Instant fame and popularity for wapping them out is no basis for a career in the entertainment industry, some standards must be upheld. This comes from a woman who's early work was a series of soft porn films written by her mucky sister.
This culture is having a terrible effect on the evil little rugrats of the world, as she says...
"I pity the poor children of today who are exposed to the nasty adult world of profanity, porn and poverty of thought."
What, like this?
Tweet
Everybody - including me - has had their say on today's youth; David Cameron thinks they're at the heart of Britain's broken and / or sick society, Nick Clegg reckons orange jumpsuits should be their apparel of non-choice, Ed Milliband reckons we're all as bad as each other from MPs down to burglars, crazy racist historian David Starkey reckons its acting like you've got darker skin than you really have that caused the mayhem and it goes on.
Right wing crazies in the Mail & Telegraph reckon the riots prove them correct; the world's gone to hell and we're only minutes away from a Pol Pot type revolution where anyone who's ever listened to Radio 3 will be slaughtered in their beds. Left wing luvvies in the Guardian & Mirror think the A-level results show the kids are alright it's the bastard bankers stealing our money and shipping it all out to Bermuda that'll leave us freezing to death in December when we can't afford 50p for the gas meter. You pay your money and take your choice, until now.
Finally from the swirling maelstrom of opinion comes a guiding light. A beacon that we can all cling to and learn from the wisdom that spouts forth from this fountain of knowledge. Step forward sage of our time... Joan Collins.
Yes Joan Collins that's right. World famous actress, star of Martini adverts (or was it Cinzano - and more importantly is there a difference?) and former UKIP pin-up has spilled her wisdom out onto the pages of the Daily Mail, and as you've probably already guessed, it turns out to be the unstable rantings of a pre-senile rich old woman who thinks today's children are all evil devils. Even her own grand kids.
Realising that she's witnessed so much wrong, and the world should be told, she's had a little Indian slave girl she keeps in a cupboard write down her observations in blood (Probably) and then has paid a tame publisher to print them in a book for her. This is being serialised in the Daily Mail for people who like Grumpy Old Men on the BBC but think it's observations are too clever, funny or communist.
Instant fame and popularity for wapping them out is no basis for a career in the entertainment industry, some standards must be upheld. This comes from a woman who's early work was a series of soft porn films written by her mucky sister.
 |
| Getting them out was for artistic reasons and not cos she's a slapper |
This culture is having a terrible effect on the evil little rugrats of the world, as she says...
"I pity the poor children of today who are exposed to the nasty adult world of profanity, porn and poverty of thought."
What, like this?
Tweet
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)